


here

by waldorph



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Blanket Permission, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:06:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I stole your bed,” Jim said. He was not, Spock noted, regretful or embarrassed, merely stating the fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CanneDeBonbon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanneDeBonbon/gifts).



> Thanks so much to **cannedebonbon** for exhibiting superhuman patience. This was less porny than what you asked for, but somewhere I found feelings (I know, I was horrified too). 
> 
> Also thanks to **screamlet** for the read-through.

_“Khan is a mirror image of Kirk, sharing his aggressiveness, ambition, and even his womanizing tendencies, but possessing them in far greater degree.” --Cantor, Paul A. (2001). Gilligan Unbound: Popular Culture in the Age of Globalization. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 222–223. ISBN 0-742-50779-3._

 

 

When he opened the door, Jim Kirk was standing on his doorstep.

“Hi,” Jim said. He had no bags, and judging by the state of his trousers and boots, he had walked from the nearest landing station to Spock’s home.

“Hello,” Spock said, and stepped aside. Jim slipped in, all the brashness of youth stripped from him abruptly, and Spock wondered what had transpired, precisely. Oh, he could read between the lines as well as anyone, better, in fact. He knew Jim had died, that Khan’s blood had been used to resurrect him, but that was not the whole story--it hardly began to be _a_ story, not given the subject matter.

In any event, none of it explained why Jim was here, on New Vulcan, at in Spock’s home. 

Spock shut the door.

*

“There’s--” Jim said, hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders pressed straight. Defiant, and braced for a blow--a rejection. “My parents are dead,” he says. 

George Kirk in the infamous _Narada_ incident. Winona Kirk in the less infamous, but perhaps more intriguing, _Ulysses_ destruction ten years later. His stepfather, Frank Hallie, had custody of him for six years until Jim had sought and won his independence, and that alone spoke volumes about their relationship. George Samuel Kirk, as far as Spock could ascertain, had never been born in this timeline. Jim Kirk was an only child.

 _There’s no one else I can go to,_ was what he was saying.

“I was just brewing some tea,” Spock said, turning into his kitchen. Jim followed like a shadow. 

It was comforting, Spock thought, as Jim stared in horror at his cup of tea after choking down the first swallow, that some things were consistent. 

*

Jim had gone to bed--by which Spock meant that he had done the dishes, realized it was very quiet, gone to find Jim and discovered him collapsed across Spock’s bed, snoring gently. Spock decided to leave him alone. He had not been oblivious to the lavender circles under Jim’s eyes, or the gaunt cut of his cheekbones, the way his fingers had trembled before he curled them around a cup or into fists. It had been a difficult time for Jim--a difficult life, perhaps, and there would be no incarnation, no version of Jim which Spock would not feel protective towards. 

There was another knock on his door, and he was not surprised to find himself on the other side.

“I am looking for Jim Kirk,” Spock said without preamble. “Have you seen him? Have you spoken to him?”

Imprecise language, something he would have to train himself out of, though Spock was not going to offer him assistance in that. Instead, he nodded, and chose to answer the latter of the queries. “I have spoken with him briefly,” he said. “He seemed...unsettled.” 

“It is imperative I locate him,” Spock said. “Did he indicate where he was going?”

“He did not,” Spock said. Jim had not even managed to say why he was there, much less where he was going.

Spock pursed his lips, scanning the unfamiliar terrain of a place he would likely never call home. It was a very human gesture--one of their mother’s, in fact. It was--strange. It was strange to see her in himself, when his whole life he had been told he looked like his father.

“If he contacts you again,” Spock said, “will you let me know?”

“You will be the first,” Spock assured him. 

“Thank you,” Spock said abruptly, not thanking him for the promise, but shifting topics. “For your guidance. I know that you were unwilling to--”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Spock dismissed. “I am pleased you survived, though perhaps that is self-serving.”

Spock contemplated it with a flick of his eyebrow--another very human gesture. It was so strange to see the ways that this Spock was far more human that Spock thought he had ever been (though perhaps he had been moreso, and lacked the distance to accurately judge himself).

“Farewell,” Spock said.

Spock saluted him and turned on his heel, and Spock closed the door.

*

Jim Kirk had not been asleep in Spock’s bed for over one hundred years. He wondered if this Jim would feel it an intrusion, if Spock merely _looked_ , but he found he was of a mind to beg forgiveness, if that was the case, rather than abstain. 

His face was sharper, and bore scars. Perhaps some from acne, but there was a pattern along his left cheek which suggested he had met the ground at a high speed--road burn, if Spock had to guess. His lashes were longer, his nose sharper, lips fuller. Indeed, he was recognizable as Jim, but if Spock had had them side by side he doubted he would have identified this Jim as--well, as Jim. He was taller, too, or perhaps his legs were longer, and there was something fragile in him. Something Spock wanted desperately to protect.

*

He woke him after twenty-four hours to eat some soup, which he did, rubbing at his eyes like a child, and Spock wondered at that. Even when Jim had been his most childish, it had always been a man acting as a child, throwing a tantrum or digging in his heels or gloating as only Jim Kirk had been able to. This Jim--he was so much younger, and much of the youth was not an artifice. 

“I stole your bed,” Jim said. He was not, Spock noted, reproachful or embarrassed, merely stating the fact.

“Borrowed,” Spock said. “I have every faith you will give it back.”

“I thought you guys didn’t believe in faith.” And there it was--the edge.

“I have always found you to be inspiring,” Spock told him, and Jim frowned as though he did not know what to do with that, and was too tired to scoff. 

If Spock was given to fancy, to frivolity, hyperbole, he might say it broke his heart.

*

Spock did not press Jim as to the reason he had picked Spock. He did not argue with him about sharing the bed, and he did not comment when they woke up with Jim curled against him.

Jim broke three plates and dented a doorframe, stared at his hands as though they had betrayed him, and Spock had cleaned the mess and handed him a hammer for the doorframe. 

Jim ran and ran and ran and came back with a wild look around his eyes, barely winded, and Spock handed him a PADD loaded with Vulcan philosophy that outsiders were not meant to have.

Jim was not an outsider, not really. 

*

“The thing is,” Jim said one day, staring out Spock’s windows, “they all want to listen to me. Every word I have to say, they’re hanging on it.”

“It is not unsurprising,” Spock said.

“I don’t know what to tell them. I know what I want to tell them, and I know what they should do, but--I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s him. I didn’t care, before. And then Pike died and then Marcus and I didn’t--I was dead. And maybe that was better, becuase I’m so--” He swallowed back the word, coughed around it, and Spock supplied it because if there was something Jim Kirk would always need to do, it would be to talk.

“Angry.”

“Yeah,” Jim exhaled. “I’m really fucking angry. And now I’ve got his blood and it’s changing me and Bones has no fucking idea how much it’s gonna change me, and you--the other you--you were gonna kill him for me and I don’t--do you know what I could do with that? Because I do. I know _just_ what I could do with that kind of loyalty.”

And that--that is a twist of the mouth Spock had not seen in well over a hundred years. It belonged on the face of a man who fought for the Empire, who had switched places with Jim and smiled, slick and dangerous and violent. Spock had been so glad to see that version of Jim back in his own universe, where aggression and violence were mainstays. He had not thought that he would see an echo of it here. 

“You came here,” Spock said.

“Because you knew the me who--I mean, he must have been better, right? You were so fucking happy to see me, you knew I’d find you and I had--I mean, I know you--I _saw_ how you were.”

“You were never psi-sensitive,” Spock observed, because Jim had been a high-functioning empath, but never particularly capable of initiating his own side of a mind-meld, not even after a decade or more of experience.

“Radiation when I was born. High esper readings, and off the record high empath abilities. And, you know, whatever the fuck abilities Khan had,” Jim dismissed, waving his fingers before putting his head in his hands.

“Jim, you weren’t listening before,” Spock pointed out after a long silence.

“When?”

“You came _here_ ,” Spock said. “You did not stay and incite a regime change, or promote yourself, or alter Starfleet and the Federation to align with your vision of how things should be. You came here.”

Jim lifted his head and stared, and Spock could not stop himself reaching out, taking Jim’s hand in his. 

Jim held on like it was a lifeline. Perhaps it was.

*

Things got better, a bit, after that. The reason made more clear, Spock could counter whatever poisonous thoughts of self-doubt or self-aggrandizement Jim was having. Spock did not think anyone would begrudge Jim the time to find his footing. McCoy would, no doubt, complain violently, and perhaps even be hurt that he was not included, but he would, Spock was certain, understand. Perhaps better even that his own McCoy--this one was some amalgamation of father and brother and conscience for Jim, the man whom Jim was most afraid to let down.

It was curious that Jim was most afraid of his influence on Spock’s younger counterpart. 

“He loves her,” Jim said one night as they played chess. “He does. I just--he does.” 

“Which of us are you attempting to convince?” Spock wondered, moving a rook. Jim moved his knight. This Jim was better at chess, and it was incredibly vexing.

“Shut up,” Jim muttered. 

*

“He is with you,” his counterpart said. He looked tense, and hurt. “Do not lie.”

“He is,” Spock agreed.

“You will--” he cut himself off, glanced into another room to where, no doubt, Nyota was. “There is a meeting he must not miss in two weeks, if he does not wish to be declared AWOL.” 

“I understand,” Spock said, and waited to hear. He did not know for what--if he was asked not to pursue Jim, would he do it? Would he hold off that his younger self might be happy?

“Thank you,” was all his counterpart said, and ended the transmission.

*

The answer was “no.”

*

They continued to share a bed. Spock only had one bed, and he was not going to yield it to Jim. He was not unaware of the fact that Jim would wake up and slip into the bathroom, coming out ten minutes later lax-boned and satisfied, falling to sleep and leaving Spock laying beside him, fingers itching for contact, his body heavy with want.

*

“I never really had friends, you know?” Jim said another day, looking up from his PADD. “I suck at it.” 

“Are you not friends with McCoy?”

“Bones is different,” Jim dismissed. “Bones is Bones.” 

“Are you not friends with Spock?”

“I don’t know,” Jim sighed, slouching deeply into the chair and going boneless. “Ugh, you’re so fucking annoying.”

“Do not conflate us.”

“That was deliberate word choice,” Jim said, and picked up his PADD again.

Spock frowned at him for a long time, thoughtful.

 

*

Spock was unsure what was Khan’s blood and what was just the result of growing up in this universe. The physical strength, the endurance, those were obviously results of Khan’s blood because Jim was surprised by them. But the rage, the anger, the violent ambition--

Spock was not so certain those were not things inherent to this Jim Kirk, who had not been tempered by his parents, by an older brother, by a kinder, quieter universe. 

They spent hours talking around the Jim Spock had known, the one who had been quieter, steadier. 

“He had doubts, too,” Spock said. “There were times when he was wrathful.”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed. “But they weren’t--” _all that he was_ , Spock filled in, because Jim was good at leaving those silences.

*

When Jim kissed him, Spock was not expecting it. It was not that he could not see that Jim--he knew what he offered was attractive to Jim. Someone to listen, someone to be a barrier between Jim and those with whom he would avoid. 

Jim was very young, and Spock was--not. And Jim had always loved the prettiest thing in the room best, had never been quite able to stop his eye wandering, even when he’d done nothing about it. 

So it is _extremely_ unexpected.

*

The kiss changed things. Jim would turn his face up when Spock walked into a room, brush his fingertips along Spock’s. He was openly _needy_ , demanding of time and attention, and there was only a week left until Jim had to go back to the real world. 

*

“I need you,” Jim groaned, fucking himself down. “God, please--I just--I just do, okay?”

“Yes,” Spock agreed. “Anything.” 

“Don’t--don’t promise me that,” Jim said, voice hitching a little. The rhythm he set for himself was punishing, but Spock allowed it. He would grip Jim’s hips if he was in true danger of hurting himself, steady and still him, but this insane edge of pleasure and pain--Jim needed that.

“Within reason,” Spock allowed, and then rolled them, pressing Jim into the mattress and kissing him to silence whatever pedantic, irrelevant argument he was about to start.

*

“I’m going back,” Jim said, chewing on his thumb, staring at the door. Soon, Spock would come to collect him. They had had a quiet, muted argument in another room, and Spock had done them both the courtesy of concentrating on cooking dinner, and pretended not to notice when Jim threw his comm out the window. 

As far as Spock knew, it was still there.

“It is your best destiny,” Spock said now, watching Jim pace.

“Five years is a long time.” He was whining, now, and Spock was refusing to indulge him with fondness.

“I have waited longer,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah,” Jim agreed, kissing him as his transport arrived at Spock’s door. “Plus, phonesex.” 

Spock had forty more years, if his lifespan was average. Jim could expect--well. They might die within years of each other, here. If he was able to keep Jim long enough. If Jim survived that long without Spock beside him. Because Spock had tempered the violence in Jim, soothed it, but he had no illusions that his young counterpart would do the same, and if McCoy was unable to exercise restraint on them both, Spock could not say what might happen. He could only see that he might, once again, mourn Jim. Mourn himself.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Blanket Permission:** go ahead and translate, make podfic, rework the fic, or do whatever other transformative work you can think of. If the work is hosted on another site, drop me a comment or email and I'll put a link in the story notes!
> 
> [twitter:](https://twitter.com/waldorph) for unfiltered me || [tumblr:](http://waldorph.tumblr.com/) less about me, more about the pretty gifsets and art

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4446281) by [haru182](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haru182/pseuds/haru182)
  * [[PODFIC] here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6907135) by [KeeperofSeeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperofSeeds/pseuds/KeeperofSeeds)




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